Galilean resonances: the role of experiment in Turing's construction of machine intelligence

Autor(es)

Goncalves, Bernardo

• Tipo de documento: Artigo Científico
• Fonte: ANNALS OF SCIENCE; v. N/A, p. 31-pg., 2023-07-18.

Resumo

In 1950, Alan Turing proposed his iconic imitation game, calling it a 'test', an 'experiment', and the 'the only really satisfactory support' for his view that machines can think. Following Turing's rhetoric, the 'Turing test' has been widely received as a kind of crucial experiment to determine machine intelligence. In later sources, however, Turing showed a milder attitude towards what he called his 'imitation tests'. In 1948, Turing referred to the persuasive power of 'the actual production of machines' rather than that of a controlled experiment. Observing this, I propose to distinguish the logical structure from the rhetoric of Turing's argument. I argue that Turing's proposal of a crucial experiment may have been a concession to meet the standards of his interlocutors more than his own, while his construction of machine intelligence rather reveals a method of successive idealizations and exploratory experiments. I will draw a parallel with Galileo's construction of idealized fall in a void and the historiographical controversies over the role of experiment in Galilean science. I suggest that Turing, like Galileo, relied on certain kinds of experiment, but also on rhetoric and propaganda to inspire further research that could lead to convincing scientific and technological progress. (AU)

• Processo FAPESP: 19/21489-4 - O futuro da inteligência artificial: a estrutura lógica do argumento de Alan Turing
• Beneficiário: Bernardo Nunes Gonçalves
• Modalidade de apoio: Bolsas no Brasil - Pós-Doutorado
• Processo FAPESP: 22/16793-9 - Reconstruindo o argumento de Alan Turing sobre consciência de máquina
• Beneficiário: Bernardo Nunes Gonçalves
• Modalidade de apoio: Bolsas no Exterior - Estágio de Pesquisa - Pós-Doutorado
• Processo FAPESP: 19/07665-4 - Centro de Inteligência Artificial
• Beneficiário: Fabio Gagliardi Cozman
• Modalidade de apoio: Auxílio à Pesquisa - Programa eScience e Data Science - Centros de Pesquisa em Engenharia